You might want to work on your welding when building the cage. After the 130 club the requirements for driver containment get pretty strict. You need to really digest the rule book before spending any money.
Heh... I should work on my welding BEFORE I weld the cage! I mean... I'm brave, but i'm not brave enough to trust my life to globbed up mess I call welds!
I really think I'm going to hand roll cage design and building over to someone else. If I can get someone else to do it for a couple of thousand dollars, which seems possible, then that's really a better thing to do. Really a proper tubing bender ends up costing as much as having a cage built. Not to mention mitering jigs, and 2 miles of wasted tubing because I've mitered it on the wrong end and bent the tubes the wrong way. It's just going to be cheaper to take the car down, give her up for a few weeks and let someone that isn't a total hack do the job. Besides, drinking beer and watching someone else do all the work. Hell that's a good deal at almost any cost!
I have to sort out what i'm going to do header wise first. I have a distinct feeling it's going to be less work to route the cage around the headers than to route headers around a cage. I think I would like the cage extended out to the front sub frame and rear subframe, tying the two halves of the car together. probably out to just forward of the mounting point of the upper control arm. Part of me is also saying "just front half the car stupid."